[2012-2017] The Hollande Presidency and a Wave of Terrorism

The year is 2012. A steady May rain falls on Paris as François Hollande arrives at the Élysée Palace. He is the first Socialist president in France since François Mitterrand, elected on a promise to be a “normal president,” a deliberate contrast to the frenetic energy of his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. But the times were anything but normal. France, like much of Europe, was still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. Unemployment was stubbornly high, hovering around 10 percent, and the nation was bracing for a period of austerity and economic pain. Hollande’s early presidency was immediately consumed by these challenges, but it was a sweeping social reform that would first reveal the deep fractures running through French society. In 2013, his government passed the “mariage pour tous” law, legalizing same-sex marriage and adoption. While celebrated by many as a landmark victory for equality, it triggered a powerful and visually striking opposition. Hundreds of thousands of protestors, organized under the banner “La Manif pour Tous” (The Protest for All), filled the streets of Paris, clad in pink and blue, in a massive show of conservative resistance. France was a nation arguing with itself over its most fundamental values, a debate that was soon to be violently overshadowed.

On the morning of January 7th, 2015, the argument changed. The air in Paris was cold and crisp. Inside the offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, journalists were holding their editorial meeting. Suddenly, two masked gunmen stormed the building. Armed with assault rifles, they forced their way into the newsroom and opened fire, methodically executing celebrated cartoonists and staff members. The attackers’ shouts of “Allahu Akbar” echoed in the street. Charlie Hebdo was a publication that embodied a particularly French form of provocative, anti-authoritarian satire, and it had a long history of publishing controversial cartoons, including some depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The attack was a direct assault on the freedom of expression, a core tenet of the French Republic. The horror did not end there. Over the next two days, an associate of the killers murdered a policewoman and then stormed the Hyper Cacher, a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris, taking shoppers hostage just hours before the Jewish Sabbath. Four people were killed. The message was chillingly clear: the targets were the pillars of French identity—free speech and its Jewish citizens.

The response was immediate and immense. A simple, powerful phrase began to spread across social media and appear on signs around the globe: “Je suis Charlie”—I am Charlie. It was a declaration of solidarity, an assertion that an attack on the cartoonists was an attack on everyone. This wave of emotion culminated on January 11th in a spectacle of national unity. More than four million people marched across France. In Paris, a sea of humanity, estimated at over one and a half million, silently and solemnly walked the city’s boulevards. In an extraordinary image broadcast worldwide, over 40 heads of state and government, from Germany’s Angela Merkel to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas, linked arms at the front of the procession. For a moment, it felt as though France, and perhaps the world, was united against barbarism. Yet beneath the surface of this powerful unity, difficult questions lingered about the nation’s social fabric, its secular identity known as “laïcité,” and the integration of its large Muslim population.

For ten months, an uneasy calm settled over the nation. Then came the night of November 13th, 2015. It was a Friday. The autumn air was mild, and Paris was alive. At the Stade de France, on the city’s northern edge, 80,000 spectators, including President Hollande himself, were watching a friendly football match between France and Germany. In the city’s bustling 10th and 11th arrondissements, cafes and restaurants like Le Carillon and Le Petit Cambodge were filled with people starting their weekend. At the Bataclan, a historic concert hall, the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal was playing to a sold-out crowd. At 9:20 PM, the first of three explosions was heard outside the stadium—suicide bombers detonating their vests. Minutes later, the coordinated massacre began in the city center. Teams of gunmen, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, moved from terrace to terrace, spraying bullets at unsuspecting diners. The deadliest assault was reserved for the Bataclan. Three attackers entered the concert hall, firing into the dense crowd and then executing survivors one by one. For nearly three hours, they held the concert-goers in a state of absolute terror before police stormed the building. That night, 130 people were murdered and hundreds more were wounded in the deadliest attack on French soil since the Second World War. A shell-shocked President Hollande addressed the nation, declaring a state of emergency for the first time in decades and closing the country’s borders. The city of lights had been plunged into darkness.

The aftermath of the November attacks transformed daily life. A state of emergency, extended repeatedly, became the new norm. The government launched Opération Sentinelle, deploying thousands of heavily armed soldiers to patrol the streets. They became a common, unsettling sight at airports, train stations, tourist landmarks, and even outside schools. A sense of vulnerability permeated the national consciousness. Every public gathering was now viewed through a lens of potential risk. This climate of fear was precisely the attackers’ goal, and it was brutally reinforced eight months later. On July 14th, 2016, the nation celebrated Bastille Day. In the southern city of Nice, thousands of people, including many families with children, had gathered on the famous Promenade des Anglais to watch the traditional fireworks display over the Mediterranean Sea. As the final rocket burst in the sky and the crowd began to disperse, a 19-tonne cargo truck deliberately mounted the pavement. It accelerated, swerving through the panicked crowds for more than a mile, aiming to kill as many people as possible before the driver was shot dead by police. The attack left 86 people dead and over 400 injured. The contrast between the festive celebration of national liberty and the brutal carnage was devastating.

This unrelenting wave of terrorism came to define François Hollande’s presidency. His economic and social policies were eclipsed by the all-consuming demands of national security. He presided over a nation in mourning, a nation on high alert, and a nation grappling with profound questions about its future. The attacks fueled a rise in nationalist sentiment and intensified political debates over immigration, security, and Islam’s place in a secular republic. For Hollande, the political cost was immense. His approval ratings fell to historic lows, at one point sinking to just 4 percent. Faced with such deep unpopularity, he made a decision unprecedented in the history of the Fifth Republic: he announced he would not seek a second term. As his presidency drew to a close in 2017, France was a country profoundly changed. The sense of optimism from 2012 was gone, replaced by a collective trauma and a deep-seated anxiety. The soldiers on the streets were a constant reminder of the threat, a scar on the face of a nation that had been forced to confront the darkest forces of the new century, leaving it forever altered.